a love poem
by Trella
Summary: but this not a love poem.


she plays solitaire  
on the computer  
and is careful to bring the cards down  
before she puts them up  
because you get more points that way.  
and then she remembers that  
playing vegas style  
all that matters is the money  
but she does it anyway  
because the formalities  
tickle her  
and bind her  
at the same time.  
she was in spain the week after  
the world crashed  
and burned around her  
bombs on trains and people  
dead.  
two hundred people  
dead.  
but of course the only  
thing they talked about was the next  
attack because frankly who  
cares about spain all that much  
anyway?  
she pretended like the rest to  
know these things about terrorists and  
the world  
and talked about maybes and wills and whys and whats  
but really she doesn't have a  
clue about what  
is wrong with the world and  
why  
and she goes about her day like that listening  
to nirvana in her head  
but chopin in  
her heart and sometimes  
debussy.  
she tries not to let  
things get to her but they  
always do.  
once upon a time she  
was sure of everything and  
knew all of the answers  
but not so now.  
the day she got to spain  
she slept  
for the first time in 6  
days.  
sleep isn't her  
first priority.  
she strolled around the sunny streets taking  
in anything and everything  
listening and speaking in a language  
she loved because nothing  
was real in a language  
she could not really understand  
no matter how well she could speak it.  
although she couldn't really speak  
it all _that_ well.  
during the day she wanders from  
street to street experiencing new  
things in almost blistering heat but  
for once she doesn't mind  
the sun.  
and during the night she sleeps  
and for the first  
time she doesn't have  
the terrible dreams.  
and while studying the anguish of  
guernica she can  
forget about the anguish  
of always being second-best and  
never good enough for him  
he who was always dazzled by  
the merits and kindness of a certain perfect  
girl and confidante  
(what does that make me?)  
but this isn't  
a love poem.  
besides  
even if it were  
he shouldn't be the subject of it  
anyway.  
living in a different country for a  
while she learns that there is no  
subway only  
the metro and that  
carbonated water doesn't exist but water with gas  
does.  
and she laughs (in a real sort of way) to herself as she  
watches an american ask for directions in  
english and the passerby replies in rapid spanish and  
presumes that if she uses  
enough hand motions he'll eventually  
get it.  
and for once her headphones aren't  
a part of her head to block out the noise of  
the world and sunglasses don't shield her eyes from the darkness of  
the world and she doesn't have to worry about bullets or bombs or  
crazy italian prophets..  
a couple nights pass and then she  
takes a train to another cloud of  
her heaven where she is  
met with orange trees everywhere she goes.  
oranges  
she decides  
are her favorite fruit.  
an afternoon's worth of searching brings  
her only a bit closer to the cathedral because  
she has been too distracted by the beauties of  
a normal and foreign life  
and besides her  
map is of the wrong  
city.  
but it doesn't faze her in the least and  
instead she walks down a promising  
alleyway basking in the afternoon glow  
of a spanish sun that never seems to  
abandon her and then she finds a little store  
of unique splendor.  
but all of the little treasures pale in  
comparison to one necklace.  
all it is  
is a little black cord with  
a smooth round silver pendant  
and a bright orange sun enameled  
in the middle.  
and she has no idea why but  
it strikes her fancy and to her it is  
the most beautiful thing she  
has ever laid eyes on.  
except for a certain blonde and blue-eyed person but this  
is not a love poem  
is it?  
picking up the necklace she  
imagines wearing it and sees the clasp  
in a design that is  
strange yet fitting and she wants it to be  
hers.  
but she glances at the price and sets it down  
along with some of her  
joy.  
she figures she'll find something else in all of  
spain that will match its radiance and at the same  
time be kinder to her  
wallet.  
so she finally finds that sneaky cathedral and climbs  
the great tower that overlooks the entire city  
and she tries to capture the memory to bring back  
but for now she doesn't  
want to think of leaving.  
she strolls along every inch  
of the city as if attempting to memorize  
its every road  
field  
and pathway.  
and for some moments she forgets about  
the necklace while she looks for something else  
to remember her rare moments of  
tranquility by  
but she finds  
nothing.  
and that night she realizes she made a mistake back  
in the shop when she  
let the necklace and its  
cost  
go.  
thinking about it now  
the price really wasn't so high.  
she looks around frantically for  
the answer to her longing  
and of course it  
has to rain like in the movies where  
something dramatic is always  
happening which is something  
she never understood because she has always loved  
rain.  
she retraces her every step around the city but is  
met only by brick walls and carnicer?s that  
tell her nothing nor give her any clues.  
she must be close  
she _must_ be close because  
she remembers this row  
of shiny and not so shiny motorcycles and  
street corners of spent cancer sticks  
and yet her desire eludes her and soon  
dissipates into but another  
vague dream and by this time the store  
would be closed  
anyway.  
the train ride to granada is spent staring out  
of the windows and a still surprisingly dreamless  
sleep although she sometimes sees blurred flashes of  
silver and orange smiling at her and sometimes laughing but  
in a bitter sort of way like  
the bittersweet oranges that sometimes grow with  
the fabulously perfect  
ones although she's not sure  
whether maybe the not so sweet ones are really the  
perfect ones.  
the day she gets into  
granada she finds the old  
muslim palace that was the last  
moorish stronghold in spain.  
the path to the fortress is all  
uphill and she finds it terribly symbolic and the path  
really quite beautiful with its small waterfalls and columns of  
water cascading down the sides of the path.  
but it is forgotten the moment she sets  
foot in la alhambra and sees the palace for  
it takes her breath away with its devastating  
beauty.  
the view from la alhambra  
is the most exquisite in all the world.  
and she understands even less now why  
the christians had to disrupt such  
a peacefully gorgeous place and  
at the same time she feels  
God.  
the water and generalife and los palacios nazar?s  
and the intricate carvings of the  
captivating beauty of arabic script are all that fill her mind  
and she can think of nothing but beauty and God for  
all the time she is there and quite  
a bit after she forces her  
self to leave at  
closing time.  
and it is then that she tells herself she will never  
ever leave spain  
although deep in her heart she knows this  
is impossible no matter how much she wants  
to keep living these  
days of relaxed nothing walking and  
living and tasting and feeling and  
loving the small things like  
the avocado and fresh squeezed orange  
juice and tomato and mozzarella salads and sparse cars but  
countless throngs of people on the sidewalks leisurely heading to their  
destinations.  
her spanish words with american clothes receive  
smiles from strangers ?real ones ?and she finds her  
self smiling real smiles in return  
something she has missed for so  
long and not even known it.  
because finally ?finally ?she is lost  
in the best kind of way so that people  
(agents_assassins_fathers_exmothers_exboyfriends_exlovesofherlife_s)  
can't find her  
although she could almost swear she saw  
a familiar head of perfectly tousled blonde hair.  
then she heads to barcelona and  
finds a strange language she cannot really understand although  
it's based on spanish  
but to her it's a jumble of sounds and letters that dimly resemble  
something she once knew but cannot now  
be sure of.  
she reads about bicycles and watches ice skating on  
television and all of the twists and the  
turns and the art and the slips and crashes that  
glide across the screen and she wishes she were  
back in madrid walking la puerta del sol at night or  
in granada marveling at the sunset from the orange  
gardens in the palace.  
but she cannot be so she goes to sleep instead.  
another dreamless sleep but this time slightly uneasy.  
one more train ride and she is in paris expecting  
some days of the peace that comes in a familiar  
place no matter how unpeaceful but she finds it  
jarring to suddenly be in a city still in snow and  
wintry temperatures with butter for bread instead of olive oil  
and a world based more on looking than  
living.  
and then she realizes that her main objection is that paris is  
closer to new york than it is to madrid.  
of course she makes her obligatory rounds to  
the louvre and notre dame but  
any museum seems like an elementary school hallway after  
the prominence of el museo del prado and she would gladly give up all the gilded cathedral   
ceilings in the world if only she could revel in the austere  
beauty of la alhambra for all  
of time.  
and so she hides away in a room and reads some more and watches  
ice skating once again and her eyes light up in  
delight as she watches joubert perform  
a spectacular routine to  
pink floyd's song  
of time.  
then she thinks maybe montmartre and its  
bohemian brilliance  
will take her mind off things.  
so she takes the metro and sees the eerie carousel  
spinning emptily and climbs the great white steps in front of  
the cathedral and at the top remembers why she thought paris was so  
beautiful.  
but even the bohemian district has submitted to the demands of faceless  
people who know nothing but the corporate cookie-cutter  
sparkle of a designer jewel and do not understand  
the glory of a simply designed jewel  
but now this sounds post-adolescently idealistic  
na?e  
and clich?.  
she boards a plane back to her former  
life if  
by life you mean existence and drawing breath only  
to let it back out again and killing and running and spying and hiding  
only to further the existence of a damned cult.  
back to a cold  
hard country and its coldly hard  
language of harsh and obnoxious sounds and  
soldiers that committed grave sins  
against humanity.  
and spain was not perfect  
(how could it be  
being on earth and occupied by humans?)  
but for her it was a taste of  
utopia.  
in truth a greek word meaning  
no place.  
sooner or later she would have been sure to become  
disenchanted with a place even such as spain  
but the later ?or even the sooner ?would have been perfectly fine  
with her if only she could stay  
just a little longer.  
but she is in america absorbing things  
people believe they believe  
but really don't  
and don't understand in the first place  
and it's back to the way things were  
sometimes not sleeping  
other times staying up merely  
because it is dangerous to sleep  
since  
she might wake up much too late and besides  
she would wake up screaming  
anyway.  
and on the extraordinary occasions she does sleep she is soon  
awakened by fascinatingly twisted images of broken  
dreams and hearts and mothers named peace and certain people on whom  
this poem is not written for it is not  
a love poem.  
and all she really wishes for  
is the dreamless serenity she had and the  
real happiness she felt or even maybe the old  
familiar nightmares that didn't taunt her but  
in her dreams  
all she sees  
is the happy necklace.


End file.
